US launches missile attack on Syria, Putin denounces aggression and int. law violation

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the US missile attack on Syria is aggression against a sovereign state.

On Thursday-Friday night, the US launched a massive strike, 59 rockets in all, at a Syrian air force base.

Donald Trump called Washington’s action a response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian government troops in Idlib.

“President Putin believes the American strikes on Syria to be aggression against a sovereign state and violation of international law under a false pretext,” Peskov told reporters.

He emphasized that the Syrian army has no stockpiles of chemical weapons: “The fact that Syria’s armed forces’ stockpiles of chemical weapons were destroyed was observed and confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a specialized unit of the UN.”

The Kremlin's spokesman also noted that, in Putin’s opinion, completely ignoring the facts of chemical weapons being used by militants “significantly aggravates the situation.”

In Peskov’s words, Putin also believes that Washington is trying “to divert the international community’s attention from the numerous victims among the civilian population in Iraq.”

On Tuesday, the Syrian opposition accused Damascus of using chemical weapons in Idlib province. In turn, government forces blamed militants and their patrons.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has rejected the accusations, recalling that in 2013 Damascus agreed to destroy its chemical weapons stocks. In January 2016, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which in 2013 received the Nobel Peace Prize for disarming Syria, announced that the country’s chemical arsenal had been completely liquidated.